Remarkable Creatures: is there a difference between aspiring writers and professional writers?

Here's JD Revene's review



"I was fortunate to receive a pre-release copy of Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures to review. I got his opportunity as a result of my Talent Spotter Rating on HarperCollins' authonomy web-site. On that site, writers review one anothers' works with the top five each month, as assessed by peer review, receiving a HarperCollins editorial review.

As such, the works I usually review are those of fellow aspiring writers. It is my habbit to be supportive, but to try to offer advice where I see possible areas for improvement. This is quite a different sort of review: Remarkable Creatures is the edited work of a top-selling professional author.

Thus, my normal style of review would be entirely inappropriate. I have, therefore, decided that the best thing for me to is to focus on what this work's strengths are, asking the question what separates this from the best of the works on Authonomy.

Remarkable Creatures is the story of two women, Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning, who become friends despit differences in class and age and make extraordinary discoveries in the field of paleontology - at the time, a field the preserve of men.

As historical fiction it ably entertains while gently educating. Certainly I now know more about fossils than before I began reading, and yet never once did I feel that I was being lectured or reading a text book. Rather Elizabeth's enthusiasm washed over me.

The story is set in Lyme Regis, which I happen to know well from childhood holidays, and whilst one imagines it has changed somewhat since the early nineteenth century the description not only breathed life into the setting but accorded with my memories, especially of the harbour and the cob.

Similarly the period feel is ever present without being a focus, but little details - changing from coaches to carts to descend the steep hill into Lyme - accumlate in such a way that, again, one comes away afterwards feeling educated, without having noticed it at the time.

Perhaps in accord with conventions of the time, or perhaps in sympathy for the nature of the two main characters' story, this work unfolds gently. The opening passage, a preface, has drama, in a lightning strike, but it's gentle drama. And the following chapters establish characters and setting slowly by today's standard; there is no rush to action.

And yet it is a gripping read that never lost my attention. In part this is due to its intriguing premise, and in part due to an unwavering narrative voice that observes acutely and delivers the story in an engaging old-fashioned conversational manner.

The narrative switches back and forth between the viewpoints of Elizabeth and Mary, ensuring occaisonal changes in pace. Whilst Elizabeth's voice dominates, the passages from Mary's point-of-view offer a different, less refined and perhaps, less constrained, slant.

There's gentle tension along the way with the characters every involvement with male paleonatologists leading to small town gossip, and their major finding douted by others, but the feeling of the story is essentially one of hope. And by the close the two women work together in their own areas of speciality in understanding silence.

I have not read anything by Ms Chevalier before, though Girl with a Pearl Earring was a favourite of both my wife and mother, from a first read of Remarkable Creatures I can see why. This is fine writing and an enjoyable and intelligent read."